MONTREAL — A budding -- but larger than expected -- band of Conservative MPs are the new faces of federalism in Quebec after their resurgent party made a breakthrough in the province, undercutting the Bloc Québécois's momentum.
And the province's most notorious shock-radio host, André Arthur, is also bound for the Commons, winning as an independent in a Quebec City riding.
The night signalled that a large segment of the Quebec population still wanted to give federalism a chance, and that their first choice to do that was the Conservatives.
The Bloc remained the dominant party in Quebec, with 51 seats, but it was an achievement without glory. The Liberals clung to 13 seats and the Conservatives got 10. One riding was too close to call early today.
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The Conservatives garnered nearly 25 per cent of the popular support, to the Liberals' 20 per cent. The Bloc got 42 per cent of the vote.
From the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to Pontiac near the Ontario border, Tory candidates were supplanting their Liberal rivals as the leading federalist choice in the Quebec hinterland.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper will get to pick Quebec cabinet members from the likes of Lawrence Cannon, a former provincial Liberal minister; Jean-Pierre Blackburn, a Tory MP under Brian Mulroney in the 1980s; or Josée Verner, a member of Mr. Harper's shadow cabinet as a critic on the francophonie and Quebec economic development.
The Liberals, for so long the sole voice of federalism in Quebec, were reduced to a few safe seats in the west end of the Montreal Island and the Outaouais area for stalwarts like Stéphane Dion, Irwin Cotler and Lucienne Robillard.
Victims of their party's meltdown, cabinet ministers Pierre Pettigrew, Liza Frulla and Jacques Saada, caucus stalwart Denis Paradis and former astronaut Marc Garneau, all were defeated.
In eastern Quebec, where the Liberals's top organizer, Marc-Yvan Côté, had been banished by leader Paul Martin because of the sponsorship scandal, the party's already weak support caved in.
The Conservatives broke through by winning or leading in three of the four seats in Quebec City. All but one of their other gains were in eastern Quebec too.
Businessman Maxime Bernier, the son of a former Tory MP, won in the Beauce, and Ms. Verner got elected in the Quebec City riding of Louis Saint-Laurent.
And in a breakthrough in a traditionally sovereigntist stronghold, Mr. Blackburn, a former Progressive Conservative MP, is heading back to the Commons after winning in Jonquière-Alma.
Other Conservative gains included Christian Paradis in Mégantic-L'Érable, Stephen Blaney in Lévis-Bellechasse and Jacques Gourde in Lotbinière-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, all small-town eastern Quebec ridings. Mr. Blaney and Mr. Gourde have both been active before in the Action démocratique du Québec, a provincial conservative party whose leader, Mario Dumont, endorsed Mr. Harper.
In the Quebec City riding of Portneuf-Jacques-Cartier, voters turfed the Bloc incumbent and chose Mr. Arthur, a prickly maverick whose hobby is driving tour buses.
Mr. Arthur, who portrays himself as anti-establishment, is a federalist. But he is mostly infamous for his on-air comments, such as calling African foreign students the sons of cannibals, having to retract unsupported rumours about Lucien Bouchard having an affair with René Lévesque's widow.
Traditionally weak on the Island of Montreal, Mr. Harper's party last night failed to make inroads there.
In many cases, the surging Conservatives divided the federalist vote, letting the Bloc squeeze through in a three-way fight.
For nearly a decade, the province had been lying fallow for the Conservatives, so they no longer had much of an electoral machine to deliver their support.
The challenge was to get so much momentum and support that their popularity transcended their organizational weakness.
The results underlined the fact that, for all the Bloc's claims that it represents the true values of a modern, progressive Quebec, there remains in the province a vieux fond bleu -- an old-fashioned conservative foundation rooted in small-town or suburban areas.
It showed, too, that a federalist pulse still beats in Quebec. Many Quebeckers hadn't given up on Canada, they just couldn't stand the Liberals any more, especially after the sponsorship scandal.
Also, there was the "ballot-box bonus," where federalist support on voting day is always a few percentage points higher than in opinion polls because being a federalist isn't a fashionable view to share with a pollster.
The pivotal moment for Mr. Harper came at his Dec. 19 speech before the Quebec City Chamber of Commerce, where he opened the door to a more decentralized approach to federalism, promising to address the fiscal imbalance between Ottawa and the provinces and offering Quebec a seat at international conferences.
As many pollsters and analysts have noted, a good chunk of Quebeckers vote for the Bloc, or its provincial counterpart, the Parti Québécois, not because they want Quebec independence, but because they reject the status quo and seek a third-way where the province would get more autonomy.
Five fast facts
1
The Conservatives, who had no seats in 2004, break through last night in eastern Quebec and in the Quebec City area.
2
The Liberals hold on to most of their Montreal seats.
3
The Bloc comes first, but has fewer ridings and record a lower popular support than in 2004.
4
Shock-jock radio host André Arthur wins in a Quebec City riding.
5
Because the federalist vote is concentrated in fewer ridings, the Bloc Québécois has always won the most seats since it ran Quebec-wide in 1993.
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